


taken out and allowed to shine

by AnnaofAza



Category: Kingsman (Movies)
Genre: Decorating, First Christmas, Fluff, Former Domestic Violence, M/M, Minor Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-24
Updated: 2016-12-24
Packaged: 2018-09-11 21:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9025093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnaofAza/pseuds/AnnaofAza
Summary: Harry turns around, and in his hands is a box with scribbled handwriting on the side. JB’s prancing around his feet, panting eagerly. “Have fun with Roxy?”“I did,” Eggsy says slowly, carefully setting down the shopping bags, “but...what is all this?”"Just some decorating,” Harry says. “It came to my attention that our house wasn’t very...cheerful.”





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [missbecky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/missbecky/gifts).



> The title comes from a line in e.e. cummings' "little tree." There's also a reference to _Waitress_ somewhere. ;)

“So, got everything?”

Roxy nods, gesturing to the packages crammed beneath her feet and towards the back, where they’d been stacked in careful, Tetris-style bundles. Her arms move a bit stiffly, from either the cold or the weight of bags that had been strung along her arms like beads on a necklace for hours. “I hope so. Otherwise, I think I might cry.”

“I can help you bring them all in,” Eggsy offers. Unlike Roxy, who has a family who can outnumber a football team, Eggsy only had his mum, his sister, Merlin, and Harry to shop for today. He’s already bought Roxy’s present in Prague a week ago.

“Thank you, Eggsy,” Roxy says, then begins peeling off her gloves. “I just don’t know what to get the...other knights, you know. Or if I should get them anything.”

Eggsy nods. Back in the estate, the general consensus was that if you didn’t like someone, you simply didn’t get them anything; Dean certainly adhered to the rule, though he did demand something from his reluctant wife and stepson. But now in Kingsman, where social etiquette reigned, Eggsy found out that he had to give a gift just to be polite, something he privately thinks makes sense, but is still pretty weird.  

“Harry says he usually gives a box of chocolates with a standard greeting card, plus a bottle of whiskey if he actually likes them,” Eggsy advises. “I’m thinking about just piggybacking off of him.”

Roxy nudges him. “Oh, so, you’re doing a _couple’s_ gift.”

Fucking hell, she’s right. Eggsy feels his cheek heat up, hoping that Roxy will just think it’s because of the almost stifling warmth in the cab. “I guess, yeah.”

“Are you two doing anything for Christmas?” Roxy asks.

“Going to my mum’s with Harry,” Eggsy says, and to be honest, a part of him is anxious about his mum’s obvious disapproval of Harry and meeting the rest of his family. He doesn’t have as much as Roxy, but since V-Day, most had come out of the woodwork, wanting to reconnect. He only remembers his nan in Wales and a few cousins from his dad’s funeral, and Eggsy knows from what his mum has told him that most of the family either sees them as a pitiable pair who’d fallen after Lee’s death or heroes for surviving all those years. He doesn’t feel like either, really, and wonders what they’ll say to him, a chav turned tailor and dating a man over twice his age.

No matter what Harry says, though, Eggsy isn’t going to leave him for someone younger. Even though the years between them are, at times, a bit dizzying, Harry’s exactly as young as Eggsy at times, while Eggsy’s exactly as old as Harry. It evens out, and honestly, he can’t imagine anyone but Harry. Harry, who came back from the dead; Harry, who looks at him like there’s no one else in the world; Harry, who asked Eggsy to move in with him just a month ago and—

“Penny for your thoughts?” Roxy asks, and Eggsy briefly startles, seeing his friend’s playful smirk. “Or are they private?”

“Nothing you don’t already know,” Eggsy retorts quickly. “What about you? What are you doing?”

“Oh, just going back home, and if I’m lucky, my uncle will come back from Bulgaria and join me.” Roxy shrugs. “I love them, but sometimes, they’re a bit much, especially during the holidays.”

Eggsy nods, though what he knows from Roxy are that her parents are the type who sent her letters every week at boarding school, who bombard her with family vacation plans every holiday, and insist on both singing her praises and wishing that she were more than “just a tailor” while meeting friends and coworkers. He’s never had that kind of cloying sort of smothering, as Roxy bemoans, but he’s never told her that he almost envies her sometimes, where them caring too much was her biggest complaint.

“They’re now trying to fix me up. Not marry, of course, but it would just be _so lovely_ if I had a beau in mind.” Roxy’s tone pitches the slightest bit upwards towards the end, clearly imitating someone.

“I can’t imagine marrying right now,” Eggsy says. His mum got married when she was younger than he is now, but it’s something that he’d never quite considered seriously. He doesn't quite dare to think about him and Harry yet. “Maybe you can take someone to be a fake date?”

“Oh, that never works,” Roxy dismisses. “Besides, I’ll enjoy my independence for as long as it lasts, especially after the last one Dad tried to set me up with.” Her voice drops an octave. “He suggested _Digby_.”

“Digby? _Our_ Digby?”

“The same one, yes, and to be honest, he didn’t seem so bad on paper. But when I saw him at my aunt’s Ruby Wedding, ugh. No, thank you.” Roxy rolls her eyes. “And Dad tells me Digby and his family will be dropping by, so I’ll have to think of a story, and on top of Mum getting into a feud with her sister about jams, and my sister planning her own wedding, along with a few of my cousins always trying to wreak havoc…” She pauses, seemingly overtaken for a moment. “Well, I’d be a bit more pleased if Alastair showed up.”

“Makes me feel better about my holiday,” Eggsy says. At least Harry, Daisy, and his mum are on his side. The cab stops, and he looks out the window. “Oi, we’re here.”

“Back into the cold,” Roxy sighs, but unlocks the door. “If we get unpacked in less than ten minutes, I’ll make you a cuppa and send you home with some biscuits.”

* * *

 “I’m home,” Eggsy calls, balancing a paper plate full of biscuits that look good enough to be in the bakery a few blocks down from Savile Row and bags stuffed with tissue paper and presents. He then stops right in the threshold. “What…”

The house has strings of fairy lights, along with holly strung up and down the staircase. An Ella Fitzgerald record is playing, and a fire is blazing in the hearth, where there are two stockings hung. When Eggsy turns his head towards the loo, Mr. Pickle has a Santa hat perched on his head, along with a jingle bell attached to his collar. There’s even mistletoe dangling from where the kitchen meets dining room.

Harry turns around, and in his hands is a box with scribbled handwriting on the side. JB’s prancing around his feet, panting eagerly. “Have fun with Roxy?”

“I did,” Eggsy says slowly, carefully setting down the shopping bags, “but...what is all this?”

"Just some decorating,” Harry says. “It came to my attention that our house wasn’t very...cheerful.”

Eggsy expects his mum's visit to their house has something to do with Harry’s strange urge to turn their house into some Sainsbury's advertisement. She'd come by the other day to pick up Daisy and had raised her eyebrows at the framed butterflies crowding the walls and Mr. Pickle in the downstairs loo. "Didn't decorate for Christmas, then?"

Harry had explained that he often worked holidays and never found the time to decorate. Coming from someone who's supposed to just be an ordinary tailor, the excuse seemed pretty weak, and although his mum was usually careful not to do more than frown in Harry's direction around Daisy, she said, a bit sharply, “Well, it looks like you don’t have anything to celebrate,” throwing a brief glance at Eggsy.

It’s not like Eggsy really minded, even when there was only six days left until Christmas. To him, it was another day of the year where it was all another disappointment. He hardly had money for presents, and Dean always loved to start rows, especially with enough pints in him. Usually, Eggsy scrimped enough to get Daisy and his mum something, but ended up either going out with Jamal and Ryan to a pub or waiting for Dean and his mates to leave the flat so he and his mum and Daisy could sneak in a movie before they got back.

His mum would try to decorate, but it wasn’t the same after his dad’s death. It seemed more as if she were trying to keep things normal and doing it more out of habit than out of genuine holiday cheer, and after Dean had smashed an ornament, a pair of penguins holding hands, it seemed better to protect what they had. Eggsy helped put up a plain, small Christmas tree, strung with white lights with a few dead bulbs, and that had been mostly it.

“It’s a bit wasteful, too,” Harry had commented once, while Eggsy nodded absentmindedly, playing a trivia game on his mobile. “And what’s the point if it’s just me to see it, especially if I’m gone for the season?”

“We don’t have to,” Eggsy now says. He places the biscuits on the kitchen table, then sinks to his knees to pet a curious JB.

“But do you want to?” Harry asks. He puts the box down. “If you don’t, I can put things back as they were.”

Eggsy hesitates, looking around the house. It does look nice—cozy, even. And it’s different now—so different from last December that it seems unreal. He has his mum and sister safe in a flat of their own, a job unlike anything else in the world, his stepdad locked away with his mates scattered, and Harry.

He looks at Harry now, waiting for Eggsy’s answer. Harry has on comfortable trousers and a deep green cardigan, glasses perched on his nose. As always, his hair is tamed into a neat wave without so much as a strand out of place.

Merlin had once joked about it being Harry’s one pride and joy and sense of beauty, vain man that he is, yet Eggsy knows the only time Harry allows his hair to be mussed is when they’re in bed together, Eggsy’s fingers combing through soft curls that Harry pretends to despise. He knows Harry likes to have the back of his neck massaged, his curls tugged gently while teeth scrape his collarbone, and his scars, even the one from Kentucky, kissed in the dark. He’s the only one, Harry’s only one, and Harry’s his.

“I do,” Eggsy says.  

* * *

For the next half hour, Harry and Eggsy haul boxes out of the basement. After the tapes holding together the flaps are ripped and discarded into the bin, they wrestle the fake tree into submission near the front window. Luckily, the lights are already attached so they don't have to untangle a ball of cords. JB watches them, venturing forward to sniff at the branches, while Eggsy keeps watch over him to make sure the pug doesn’t lift his leg.

Next comes the sort of tedious part: unwrapping all the ornaments, which have been meticulously covered in tissue paper and grocery bags, then putting them carefully on the kitchen table. Harry, it turns out, has accumulated a lot of the years, and Eggsy bets that the weight of all of them will send the tree wobbling.

“Maybe,” Harry replies, then lifts up what looks like a squashed, brown lump of clay, with glitters of gold and thick globs of white paint. “We can have a rejection process.”

"What's that?" Eggsy asks, putting down a silver stag, with glass beads dangling from its antlers. It reminds him of the twenty-four hours, where he had pointed to a few of the Sun covers on Harry's wall, but instead of it getting to know the field agent of over thirty years, he’s getting to know the man behind the suit of bespoke armor.

"It's a sad attempt at a gingerbread man," Harry says ruefully, picking it up by its tattered gold ribbon loop. "I never was an artist."

"It doesn't look that bad," Eggsy says, even though it does. It's clumsily made, and the gingerbread’s smile expression looks vaguely demonic. But it's endearing—and maybe a bit weird—to think of Harry as a kid, swiping a paintbrush back and forth with a serious expression on his face.

Harry smiles, then sets it to the side. "Oh, it does. And it goes where the tree faces the wall...or perhaps it’s better left in the box." He then dangles a lopsided reindeer with a red sequin for a nose. "Ah, I remember this. My brother did this one."

Eggsy startles. "You have a brother?"

"Had," Harry says, voice growing softer. "He passed away five years ago."

So many questions whirl in his mind—who was he, how did he die, where was he?—but Eggsy knows it's not the time to be asking them. Instead, he steps forward and wraps his arms around Harry. "I'm sorry."

It's overused, and he's pretty sure Harry's sick of hearing it, but Harry hugs him tighter. "Thank you, Eggsy." He places it gently back on the table, briefly running his fingers over its bumpy surface. “My parents thought it would be fun for us to make our own ornaments. Of course, we got more paint on us than our models. I had green in my hair for weeks.”

“That must have been such a hardship.” Eggsy reaches up to ruffle Harry’s hair, but Harry seamlessly steps out of the way, throwing a half-serious, half-mock frown in his direction.

“We have work to do.” Harry unwraps the last ornament, surveying the tree. “Would you like to do the honors?”

Eggsy picks up the closest one, a delicate replica of Santa’s sleigh, and attaches a hook before walking over. Selecting a spot at random, he hangs it, then turns just in time for an audible _click_ coming from Harry’s mobile.

“Harry,” Eggsy lightly complains, flushing, but Harry only asks, “Why not commemorate this?” He then taps the screen a few times before aiming it in his direction. “Say cheese.”

Eggsy lightly rolls his eyes, then poses, gesturing to the single ornament like a game show assistant in a glittery dress. He’s sure Harry’s trying his best not to roll his eyes as the camera goes off again, and Eggsy steps away from the tree, grinning a bit.

“Now, it’s your turn,” Eggsy retorts, then pulls out his own mobile. It’s not the Nokia phone that’s been dropped too many times, but one that has a touch screen and features installed by Merlin, including an app where he can take a picture of someone and have it bounce back with that person’s name and records. He’s used it a lot, posing as a university student in Florence, then as an obnoxious tourist in Belgium.

Harry obliges, picking up a pair of miniature figure skates. Eggsy takes his picture, Harry half-turned towards the camera. Someone who may see it may interpret Harry’s close-lipped smile as stiff and cold, but Eggsy can see the warmth and quiet dignity in it.

After that, they decorate the tree, talking about Christmas and the sorts of presents bought and what the other Kingsman are up to. Harry mentions that there’s a dinner for the agents who don’t have families to come home to, and Eggsy wonders if Harry had gone to them before, or if he stayed home, perhaps with Merlin. Eggsy brings Harry up to speed about his family, then chats a bit about Jamal and Ryan, who’ve promised to drop by. He’s not sure how his mates will react to the new flat, the long lost relatives, Harry, or the fancy coat Harry’s bought for him—and yes, Eggsy’s sure Harry knows about the gloves tucked away in his sock drawer—but hopes they won’t think he’s left them behind.

JB’s migrated to the couch, lazily chewing on a stuffed frog, and there’s soft music coming from the radio in the kitchen. Eggsy can’t help smiling at Harry, who returns the gesture, then asks a question about some of the ornaments with dates on them.

Harry picks up a snowflake with 1990 and his name written across the middle in silver calligraphy, just as Eggsy approaches with a plaster replica of a corgi. "My mother had a tradition of buying an ornament for each of us every Christmas. And when she died, hers went to us." He hangs it up, then picks up another, this one a dark blue bulb with gold swirls that make up the numbers of 2009. “Same with my father.”

He steps back, and Eggsy reaches to hang up his ornament, the weight of it making the branch dip dangerously low. When he takes it by the hook, pushing it back up, the tree trembles just a bit, as his fingers jerk a little to keep the little dog in place.

The dark blue bulb tumbles, and before Eggsy can move, it shatters on the hardwood floor with a sharp, soft tinkle.

"Shit," Eggsy says, freezing in place. "Shit, I'm so sorry. Harry. I—"

"It's all right," Harry replies, so calmly that Eggsy wonders if he's really mad, just hiding it beneath a mask of gentlemanly manners. He swivels his head from side to side, then walks over to the hand broom and dustbin sitting on the kitchen floor. "Accidents happen."

"But..." And Eggsy doesn't need to give Harry a reason to be angry, but can't stop: "That was your dad’s!"

"It wasn't the only ornament." Harry bends down, beginning to sweep.

"No," Eggsy says, then kneels in front of Harry, trying to take the broom away from him. "I got it; it's my mess—"

"Eggsy," Harry says, so gently. "It's all right. I'm not angry."

That stops Eggsy long enough for Harry to sweep all the thin, glittering shards and tip the dustpan's contents into the bin. He can’t seem to make himself move, knees still on the floor, and when Harry lays a gentle hand on his shoulder, he can’t stop himself from flinching.

Harry pulls away, but places his hand on the ground between them and sinks from his squat to the floor. “I’m not angry,” he repeats.

“I know,” Eggsy says quickly. He wishes this was gone, the feeling of shrinking back into his skin whenever he fucks up, waiting for the blow. “But—”

“Eggsy, it was an accident. How could I punish you for something that wasn't your fault?"

"I should have caught it. Or not wobbled the tree..."

"It's hardly anything to get upset over." Harry smiles, obviously trying to lighten the mood. "Besides, it's not a Christmas without something breaking, as my brother used to say.”

Eggsy makes himself laugh, then allows Harry to help him up. They stand there for a moment, his hand in Harry’s, and Eggsy opens his mouth to apologize, then closes it. He hates that he gets like this, even though the logical part of his brain knows that Harry will never lay a hand on him, but something inside him freezes anyway, ready to apologize or run.

He feels Harry’s hand slide away from his grip, then watches Harry’s arms rise, just slightly hovering at Eggsy’s sides. When he looks at Harry, his face is not full of pity, but in a silent question.

Eggsy steps into the embrace, his own arms coming up and pulling Harry in. Harry’s chin rests on top of Eggsy’s head, his hands pressed up against his shoulders and spine. Nothing compares to it: Harry holding him for ten minutes straight without speaking, without pulling away, without an ounce of selfishness to it.

He could stay like this for longer than this, but finally cranes his neck upwards and slowly lifts his hands away. "I..." he tries. _Come on._ "I love you."

"I love you, too.” Harry’s gaze is tender, and his hand briefly cups Eggsy’s cheek, thumb stroking over his jawbone. “How’s hot chocolate sound to you?”

Eggsy smiles. “How can I refuse?” he replies, following Harry back into the kitchen. “But first—look up.”

And just as Harry’s eyes flick upwards to the mistletoe, Eggsy pulls him for a kiss.


End file.
